Monday, August 8, 2011

Early Bird Catches the Rabid Deer

So some results I missed in this afternoon's email...

1. Meg McNew finished 2nd at the BRRC Bunker Hill Trail Race (5.5 mile) in 48:14, while Dan Goodman was 47th in 1:15:55. The craziest thing about these results is that they were posted WITHIN A DAY of the race. Impressive, BRRC.

2. Remember Tristram Thomas? I thought he had died or something, but I guess he's just been in Europe for the better part of a month. Well anyway, he won a race in Denmark over the weekend. He's not sure how accurate the 5k was, but he ran 16:41, with one dude 7 seconds back and then the rest of the field over 90 seconds back from there. It's the 4th fastest time ever run on the course (10 years, course is run every weekend of the summer). Good to know Tristram is still alive, and we may even see him tomorrow!

The rest of the results are pretty known by now, with Dave Ploskonka breaking his 50k best with his 6th place, 4:10:06 finish at the Dahlgren Heritage Rail Trail 50k and Dave Berardi finishing 25th in 20:12 at the HCS Summer XC Series race last Thursday.

Most of Sunday's results were either from Riley's Rumble Half Marathon or various triathlons. Sam Wollner, with one of the fastest swims of the day (possibly the fastest outside of the professional field), finished 47th at the NYC Triathlon in 2:17:15, his first olympic distance race. Terry Decker finished 17th at the Cayuga Lake Sprint Tri, with the 8th fastest run of the day, while his girlfriend Molly, in her first ever triathlon, finished 11th in her age group. At the inaugural Druid Hill Sprint Tri, Liz Laseter got the W for the women, breaking an hour and having the fastest run of the day.

Then there was Riley's Rumble, easily the most difficult half marathon I've ever run. Not one inch of the run was flat, you were either going up or down some pretty brutal hills out there in Germantown. Add to that a temperature around 80 degrees and 94% humidity and it was a recipe for suffering. Most of us that ran were using it as a training run, but that didn't make it any less hard. GRCers Karl Dusen and Sam Luff rolled the course, looking comfortable in their 1:16:30 efforts, while our Ed Aramayo finished 3rd in 1:22:36. He accomplished his task of running under 1:25 to get into a better corral than the last one at Chicago. Mike Mashner and I were running nicely together around 7 minute pace for the first 9 miles, when my legs dropped out and I shuffled home. Mike was 15th in 1:33:59 while I finished up 18th at 1:34:41. I got beat by the first girl, Baltimore local Kaylyn Peck. It was cool, though, as she waited until the last quarter mile to pass me, and then slowed down to chat. JUST KILL ME NOW, is what I thought, as I only kept moving my legs so it didn't look like I was walking. After starting out close to 8min pace, Melissa Majumdar picked it up at 5k to catch Nina Kristina Hartman before 10k, and then they ran down a lot of the other girls en route to 5th and 6th place finishes (Melissa 1:39:21, Nina 1:39:48). Tom Stott, feeling the effects of a summer of buying a new house and working on that, finished up at 1:44:02. Alyssa Godesky, who ran 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after the race, outran her Miami 2010 time, running a 1:47:21. Pretty impressive! She then almost got run over by a rabid deer, which crazily sprinted through the parking lot after the race.

Despite the strong support from the GRC members for the Purple Drink Athlete of the Week to go to myself, I had to go with Liz Laseter in her winning effort at the Druid Hill Tri. Congrats Liz! And thanks, GRC guys, for being on hand to watch my amazing finish. Ha.

An error was pointed out to me from the email today, I threw in an extra set of 5x300 for the TNT workout. It should have just read 5x300, 1500, 5x300, 1500, 5x300 = 7500m. Again, just a suggestion, working down throughout the workout on the 300s and keeping the effort on the 1500 the same.